"I am sure we can, dearest," was the brave response, as Helen Hungerford drew her daughter closer to her in a loving embrace.
Dorothy seized her mother's hand and kissed it passionately, two great, burning tears dropping upon it as she did so.
"He asked me to go with him—to live with him some of the time," she presently resumed.
"And you told him——" breathed Helen, almost inaudibly.
"I was very disrespectful, mamma," confessed the girl humbly; "but I couldn't help it when I thought what it all meant. I said I wouldn't live with him for anything—I almost told him that I wouldn't care if I never saw him again. Where will he go now? What will he do? Will—he marry that woman?" she concluded, her voice growing hard and tense again.
Her mother's lips grew blue and pinched with the effort she made to stifle a cry of agony at the shameful suggestion. But she finally forced herself to reply, with some semblance of composure:
"I do not know, Dorothy, and we will try not to worry over anything that he may do. However, when he secures the necessary decree from the court he will have the legal right to do as he pleases."
"The legal right," repeated Dorothy reflectively.
"Yes, the law will give him the right to marry again if he wishes to do so."
"What an abominable law! And what a shameful thing for any man to want to do, when he already has a family! What will people think of us if he does?" queried the girl, with a shiver of repulsion.